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SMOLNY
The Empress Elizabeth commissioned Rastrelli to
construct a convent where she planned on spending her
last days. Alas Rastrelli, who was busy constructing
both the Winter Palace and the Summer Palace in
Tsarskoye Selo, did not finish it before the empress'
death and the convent was never completed. Catherine
the Great in her endless desire to inflict
enlightenment upon her subjects, took what there was
of the Smolny project and turned it into a finishing
school for daughters of the gentry, the first
educational establishment for women in Russia. The
young women lived and studied in the long blue
buildings flanking the cathedral. As the school
expanded the neighboring yellow Smolny Institute was
built to hold the overflow.
During the Civil War the beautiful cathedral was used
as a vegetable warehouse and later closed while the
icons and other valuables were stripped out. It
reopened after World War II as the Museum of
Leningrad - Today and Tomorrow exhibiting "the great
contribution made by the people of Leningrad to the
fulfillment of the resolutions of the Party and
government." This too has closed and now Smolny is
the home of temporary exhibitions and occasional
choral or chamber concerts.
The Smolny Institute was also filled with vegetables
for a long time. The rubber-stamp Council of People's
Deputies worked here until 1989, receiving all their
orders from the modern building just across
Proletarian Dictatorship Square where the Leningrad
Communist Party was housed. The institute now houses
the offices of Mayor and his administration
and is not open to the public (though see also
information on the Lenin Museum).
Ploshchad Rastrelli 3. Metro: Chernyshevskaya then
trolleys 15, 18 or 49; Metro: Ploshchad Vosstaniya
then trolleys 5 or 7. Cathedral open 10:00-17:00
(10:00-16:00 Wed), closed Thursdays. Tel: 271 9182.
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